Originally posted by Lost Monkey:That is too bad... something was starting to look kinda funny... Yes, this is what drew my attention and prompted me to take a look at the voting logs.

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How about a thread where only members registered prior to the contest end date can voice their vote by posting a message?

Since I would prefer that everyone's votes not be presented in a public forum, I was thinking that I could just ask people to send me a private message with their vote. I would then manually update the contest page once a day or so.

Unfortunately this would mean that only people registered on our forums could vote, but that still leaves quite a few people to vote given that over 1300 people have registered. And it would definitely have to be constrained to people who registered, say by the end of the day yesterday, to prevent people from creating additional accounts to vote multiple times.

Originally posted by ATARIPITBULL:I think I just said that about two posts up.I think it'd be fairer that way, really. One thought I had, when the voting was announced was, that people who submitted two or more really good labels, get their votes devided between their creations, which I thought was an unfair aspect, too.

I think an additional audience-winner should be chosen by the votes, but the real winner should be named by the programmer.

If we are to maintain a scenario where voting is to select the top three labels, then the only fair way to do it (meaning, the only reasonable way to prevent cheating) is to only allow forum members to vote. Otherwise it's just too easy to tamper with the vote in some fashion, and when you have such a small number of people voting (hundreds), any cheating can affect the final outcome. It was Ronen's desire to choose a popular label, while still having a little control over the final selection (choosing one of the three most popular labels).

Ronen has been away for a few days, although I believe he should be back very soon. He'll have to make the decision on how to proceed, since it is his game. I'll have to chalk this one up as a lesson learned (meaning: voting will probably not be used to help choose a label in future contests!)

You know, first we had the bitterness over the Mental Kombat label contest, then there was some grousing over the Qb-SPecial Edition label contest, and now this little bit of Heaven. You will now understand why I have no intention of having a label contest for The Ravenous Dead once completed. Pity really. I'm certain there would've been a worthy design...

Yes there was a lot of bitching about the Mental Kombat design and then just a little bit on the QB contest but on the Castle blast this time there is voting and not just having Ronen pick the one he likes best. Just like albert said we have learned a little bit more this time about contests but as you can see there is no bitching going on this time so please have a label design contest for your game here and I bet you will be happy with all the designs we will make for your game. Please don't think that all of use designers are cry baby's.

Originally posted by Snider-man:You know, first we had the bitterness over the Mental Kombat label contest, then there was some grousing over the Qb-SPecial Edition label contest, and now this little bit of Heaven. You will now understand why I have no intention of having a label contest for The Ravenous Dead once completed. Pity really. I'm certain there would've been a worthy design...I don't remember any grousing over the Qb Label Contest, I think that one went extremely well. We learn something new every time we run one of these contests. This was the first one where we wanted to allow people to vote for their favorite label and unfortunately a few individuals spoiled that for everyone else. However, that doesn't make the contest any less successful. Ronen has many excellent labels to choose from and I'm sure everyone will respect his decision.

While I certainly wouldn't expect every homebrew author to go the "label contest" route, I look forward to more such contests down the road. I think these label contests, as well as the Synthcart Beat contest, have been a great way to allow people to participate in the release of a homebrew game and have fun at the same time. You're always going to run into some bumps on the road, but you need to take them in stride. The positives of these contests far outweigh the few negatives..

Originally posted by Snider-man:You will now understand why I have no intention of having a label contest for The Ravenous Dead once completed. Pity really. I'm certain there would've been a worthy design...Just put it in the rules that you reserve the right to call it all off if the whinging gets too much for you. Seriously.

Meanwhile, in the hope that you will do a compo, I'll keep an eye out for appropriate imagry.

After a long self debate and consideration, I fianlly made up my mind and finalized my selection.

I decided to choose Zanza's label design:

In the selection process, I printed my favorite 5 entries and actually glued them on a real cartridge case. I then, showed them to close friends (that were not following the voting on the label's contest page) and asked for their opinion. The winning label was "leading" by a bit over its runner up. Since this was my choise in the original poll, I decided on it.

Again, thank you all for taking the time and submitting your entries. I could never come close to this level of artwork myself.

Also, I'd like to thank the comitted team of AtariAge for hosting this contest.